Normally, I don’t feel this way-I’ve very leftist. HOWEVER, in this case, when she’s doing this deliberately, taking away resources from people who need them, having children when she KNOWS she can’t afford them, going through expensive treatments, and her parents are going bankrupt to take care of her…it’s pretty disturbing.
Please do NOT think I begrudge anyone government aid. I see my 90-year-old grandmother trying to get by on HER social security, and I cringe whenever she tries to give me money. (I usually accept it, and then when she’s not looking, hide it in the buffet drawer. She’s getting somewhat forgetful, so she never really knows that it was what she gave to ME, fortunately.) I remember when I was eleven years old, and my father was laid off from his job and had to collect unemployment. I myself am currently applying for medical assistance.
BUT, in this case, this woman seems to be taking advantage of the system-how did she pay for her IVF? Her father has gone back to IRAQ to work as a translator to help pay for all of this. Her mother may lose her house. There’s also speculation that she’s had plastic surgery to look more like Angelina Jolie.
She’s got a website asking for donations and the like as well.
Look-if she KNEW she bloody well couldn’t afford to have more kids, then why go through all of that expense to have more?
Comes now the possible baby daddy who came previously and requests DNA testing to establish paternity. If it is proven he is the father then I wonder if he’s stepping up to the bat in order to support the kids or profit from them. (The only thing that would make this case weirder is if the father is Larry Birkhead.)
Here’s the deal. It is the sign of a decline in a society when we are outraged at the idea of life and supporting it. That which is literally vital… When we spend one thousand more times a day in the oppression, decimation, and supppression of other life.
Some would say this is an atrocity, Some would say it’s a miracle. I believe in miracles.
Sorry, but this is absurd. Our society has always espoused the view that families have the responsibility to support and care for their own children, and that it’s irresponsible behavior to have more children than one can support and care for successfully. Such families were always looked down on in American society as “shiftless” or “trashy”.
Yes, it’s true that sometimes these reactions were based on mere snobbery about another family’s standard of living, or selfishness about providing help to distressed families. But there’s nothing snobbish or selfish about noting that fourteen children under 10 are simply too many for a low-income three-adult family (with one adult breadwinner overseas) to parent responsibly.
Hell, even day care centers, where the burden of childcare tasks is limited to the working day, are legally required to have no more than 3 or 4 infants per adult worker. The Suleman family has, AFAIK, two adult women on childcare duty round the clock (in addition to whatever student enrollment or paid work responsibilities they have) looking after eight infants, plus six other children, some with special needs. That is not responsible family management.
Applauding this kind of situation is not “supporting life”; rather, it’s recklessly elevating sentimentality over common sense and children’s well-being.
No, the greater sin is the culture that glorifies and awards these ‘miracles of motherhood’ in all other possible fucked up configurations and biologies but this, with free homes, baby supplies (diaper’s, babyfood, carseats and the cars that go with them, strollers, etc.), scholarships, and their own reality show.
That is your culture, and I pity your arithematic of values.
“All other possible”? You seem to be thinking of two celebrity large families, the Duggars and the Gosselins, which are remarkably similar in their “configurations and biologies” (both conservative Christian heterosexual white married couples who used fertility treatments).
I have no opinion on how fucked up the Duggars and the Gosselins are, and I certainly don’t endorse their family planning choices or their “celebrity family” lifestyle. But I certainly see why a rational person might easily consider the Duggars or the Gosselins more responsible parents than Suleman, and more worthy of “glorifying”.
I’m not advocating the values of admiring or “glorifying” big families or the culture of turning them into celebrities. I just think that your attempt to argue for a moral equivalence between Suleman’s situation and other “celebrity families” is slipshod, mawkish, and unpersuasive.
Failure to regard Suleman’s family situation as a “miracle” that should be enthusiastically supported, as you seem to be advocating, is not a failure to “support life”: it’s a rational response to what appears to be a very unhealthy family situation.
Supposedly the first thing she did with her injury settlement was go out and have her face done…then she got the buns implanted in the oven. Seems she knew she’d be in the spotlight a lot and doing a lot of magazine covers.
On the contrary – the bottom line is covered by the next sentence.
Based on the reported circumstances, I find it highly unlikely that she has ever spent one year as a net taxpayer (i.e. contributed to the public purse more than she consumed from it).
So it does just narrow down to money after all. She has been gainfully employed in taking care of people much of her life.
… can any public servant (Police, Fireman, Postman, Soldier, Public Healthworker) deny that they haven’t taken more money in taxes and living than Nadya Suleman? In fact, some of Nadya Suleman’s tax money, if you must look at it in that flawed crosseye.
Was she less because of time, money, culture, belief? Why don’t you tell me what her sin was? Did she get jumped in a riot too late in life… does she loose all of her rights as a Trueman due to her biology?
I keep hearing rumors that Dr. Phil bought her a house. What’s the straight dope?
I think they need to blend tabloid stories in a way that would pay for the octuplets future and entertain America: Nadya Suleman should wrestle a chimp on Pay-per-View.
Mutually exclusive statements. You bring up a history of women as breeding farms in previous times of war. Therefore, she’s not doing anything new, so she can’t be a pioneer.
And frankly, we don’t need another Baby Boom generation. Wartime has changed. Obeying our country’s demand for a constant source of future laborers is not a moral imperative any longer since the demand no longer exists. This ain’t the Industrial Age and we have plenty enough women having babies that we don’t need “heroic” efforts on the part of one woman to sustain us all.
I saw his show yesterday. He interviewed her at her house, starting rumors that he was involved with her and possibly buying her a house. Total fabrication.
For me, there’s no conundrum. Fuck her and fuck the kids. Don’t help her at all. That sounds heartless, and it is. It sounds cruel, and it is. But there are so many children in this world and this nation that are poor, and starving, and abused, and neglected, and if you tried to think about helping them all you would just go insane.
If you can’t help every single kid on this planet but still want to help, you need to take a hard look at what you’re trying to accomplish and create a plan that will best work towards that goal. Wouldn’t you make the choice to spend your time and resources helping out those it’s possible to help?
Donating money to help her raise her kids is throwing good money after bad.
Both the Duggars and the Gosselins don’t support their children on their actual income from working normal jobs. The Duggars rely heavily on donations from various places, the fact that their home is an established church, and whatever money they’re making from TLC. The Gosselins used to make a show of how Jon was employed in IT, but now it’s pretty obvious that their real means of support is the money that they get from TLC.
Both of these families travel on someone else’s dime - typically for media appearances or because it would make for a good episode of the show.
I wouldn’t call any of the above ‘responsible’ parents, particularly the Duggars, who hand their children off as infants to be raised by a female sibling.
The only thing that strikes me about Nadya Suleman is that the media is finally as repulsed by a super-breeder as they should have been by the Duggars and the Gosselins.
Well, that’s the celebrity lifestyle. As I said, I don’t endorse this as a model of healthy family living, and I personally would find it tacky and uncouth to make your family life a reality show. But at least it provides an adequate amount of financial resources and childcare. And presumably, the older kids are now or else soon will be starting to be self-supporting.
It has always been SOP in large families for the older girls to do a lot of unpaid nanny work, and a conservative-Christian family naturally is not going to let any feminist ideals interfere with that tradition. But yeah, you’ll get no argument from me that mega-breeder families are ultimately exploiting their kids as much as nurturing them, and thus are not earning any medals for responsible parenthood.
Nonetheless, I stand by my comparative statement that it’s easy to see why a rational person would be likely to consider the Duggars or the Gosselins more responsible parents than Suleman. Their parenting burden may be unhealthy but it stops short of being downright insane.
To me she seems to have “give her $2 million and soon plastic surgeons, Porsche dealers, and lottery ticket sales will all have a mini-bailout while next year she’ll be boxing Tonya Harding for $300 and won’t know where 4 of the octuplets are” written all over her.
That this person has the “right” to do what she did I will not dispute.
But it sickens me nonetheless. She is using her hapless infants as tools or toys, using them to further some bizarre end of her own and you - the American citizen - will be on the hook for it in the end.
A merciful providence would zap her and her brood with a big bolt of lightning right now and save everyone a load of trouble.
However, since the merciful providence part is missing from this equation, I guess you’re stuck. I do very much hope she never moves to Canada.